Why cigarettes are like private campaign contributions: path dependence.

A couple days ago, after much work and careful deliberation, a federal court declared the obvious: 

A federal judge Thursday ruled that cigarette makers were liable for a decades-long conspiracy to hide the dangers of smoking but declined to impose financial penalties on the industry.

In her 1,653 page opinion, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler wrote:

Cigarette smoking causes disease, suffering, and death. Despite internal recognition of this fact, defendants have publicly denied, distorted, and minimized the hazards of smoking for decades.

Why is this story even news?  The dangers of tobacco and the deceit of tobacco companies have long been obvious.  There has never been a more damning case against any industry.  See here. See also, the Executive Summary of Preliminary Proposed Finding of Fact in US v. Philip Morris, et al.

Cigarette smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke kills nearly 440,000 Americans every year. The annual number of deaths due to cigarette smoking is substantially greater than the annual number of deaths due to illegal drug use, alcohol consumption, automobile accidents, fires, homicides, suicides and AIDS combined. Approximately one out of every five deaths that occur in the United States is caused by cigarette smoking.

At the end of 1953, the chief executives of the five major cigarette manufacturers in the United States at the time – Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, and American – met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City with representatives of the public relations firm Hill

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Read more about the article Who first invented the golden rule?
Who first invented the golden rule

Who first invented the golden rule?

Answer:  Not Jesus. Who first invented the Golden Rule? Uncover its origins and dispel misconceptions. Explore the shared principles of major world religions. This post is dedicated to the many people who have claimed to me, without any evidence or research, that the Golden Rule was invented by Jesus, as…

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Huffington’s Orwell Awards

In 1946 (In Politics and the English Language) George Orwell wrote the following: [P]olitical chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. In Huffpo, Arianna Huffington has written a good post regarding government/media double-speak.   Here is the problem, according…

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Moral Values…hmm

 In 2004, George Bush was reelected.  We can debate endlessly over whether or not he stole that election, but it’s beside the point for this rant.  Besides, four million popular votes seems like a big wad to steal.

What we need to figure out if we want to have any possibility of turning this misdirected ship around is WHY SO MANY PEOPLE VOTED FOR THE REPUBLICAN RIGHT?  Not even just Republicans–there are decent Republicans that I would support (Arlan Spector comes to mind, as does a pre-2004 John McCain)–but the rabid fundie far right wing of the party, the wing that is destroying it and trying to turn this country into something like a theocracy. 

So what was it?

    The factor listed by most exit polls in Middle America was–is–Moral Values.  Not in California or the Northeast corridor, but in the Heartland.

    Moral Values.

    I had thought for a long time that the issues driving Bush supporters floated between abortion, school prayer, and taxes. I’m now not so sure tax cuts are that important–these people have got to realize that if Bush continues his policies, at some point a huge bill is going to come due.

    The furor over gay marriage in the last months of the campaign underscores the exit polls. Moral Values.

    If I thought the votes were driven by the deep morality stemming from a Kantian apprehension of the nature of the right, the good, and the universalizable as determined by a focused application of the categorical …

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No damnation without representation!

One of the main causes of America’s Revolutionary War against Britain was the fact that British Parliament was passing tax laws against the Colonies, but was also denying the Colonists the right to be represented in Parliament to protest those taxes.  “No taxation without representation” was the rallying cry that swept through the New world and solidified opposition to Britain’s dictatorial rule.

This rallying cry came thundering back into my head this week as I was reading the Bible — specifically, Daniel, chapter 9.  Nearly the entire chapter is devoted to Daniel begging for God’s forgiveness, because of Israel’s failure to obey God’s laws.  I suddenly realized that of the 600+ laws that God handed down to the Isrealites (the Ten Commandments were only a brief summary), *not one* was enacted with the consent, or even the counsel, of the Israelites.  As I read through the chapter, I suddenly realized how absurd Daniel’s begging sounded.  God did not give Daniel, or any other Israelite, any role whatsoever in making the laws that God handed down, so why should the Israelites take the entire blame for not following them?  Just as the American Colonists did in the Revolutionary War, shouldn’t Daniel have objected to dictatorial law-making as fundamentally unfair, instead of begging forgiveness for not adhering to it?

Let me anticipate the Christian objection:  unlike British Parliament, God is righteous and perfectly fair; therefore, his laws are, too.  Really?  If God is so perfect and fair, then why didn’t his elaborate …

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